McGregor is brilliant on the double for third trip to Fargo
FARGO Wednesday, C4, 10pm
TRUE to form, the fact that Ewan McGregor had emerged as a serious Hollywood player completely passed me by at first. The penny only dropped when I saw him in The Phantom Menace, the first of the Star Wars prequels, during a trip to New York in 1999.
I should probably explain at this point that I wasn’t whisked across the Atlantic by either George Lucas or 20th Century Fox for an exclusive preview of the film. Nor did I specially make the journey at my own expense because I wanted to see it as soon as it came out.
To be perfectly frank, I had no interest in seeing it at all. The only other Star Wars movie I’d ever sat through was the 1977 original and, even at eight years of age, I don’t remember being particularly overwhelmed by the experience.
No, my sole motivation for going to The Phantom Menace was to annoy a friend of mine who was ticking off the days until it opened in Dublin. For exactly the same reason, I also had myself photographed in FAO Schwartz waving around a toy lightsaber.
But I digress. By that stage, I had already seen McGregor putting in creditable performances in films such as Shallow Grave and Trainspotting. Even when he appeared opposite Cameron Diaz in the slightly peculiar A Life Less Ordinary, I still didn’t have him marked down as anything special.
But he was magnificent in the opening episode of the third run of Fargo, the anthology series inspired by the Coen Brothers’ film of the same name.
The first season, set in 2006, starred Billy Bob Thornton and Martin Freeman. For the second outing, which featured Kirsten Dunst and Ted Danson, the action moved to the late Seventies. Now we are in Minnesota of 2010 and the two principal characters are both played by McGregor.
As per usual, the drama centres on smalltown crime going very, very badly wrong. Probation officer Ray Stussy (McGregor) is a jaded individual whose life is only cheered up by the affair he is having with exprisoner Nikki Swango (Mary Elizabeth Winstead).
Meanwhile, life appears to have gone rather better for Ray’s identical twin brother Emmit (played by, guess who,
McGregor as well). He has made a substantial amount of money in parking lots and lives in a fine house where the decor includes a rare vintage stamp framed on the wall.
Things start to get complicated when Ray and Nikki recruit a heavy to steal the stamp.
But Emmit also has other problems relating to a $1million loan that is being called in by the mysterious V.M. Varga (the excellent David Thewlis). Needless to say, it is only a matter of time before there is claret all over the place.
But there are also the small details that, at best, make life so infuriatingly bonkers – and, at worst, have far more serious consequences. We’re talking unlikely coincidences, mistaken identity, wrong addresses and all the rest of it.
This episode began with an unconnected scene set in East Germany not long before the fall of the Berlin Wall. An innocent man is accused by Stasi officers of being a Ukrainian immigrant wanted for murder. The only thing linking him to the real culprit is the fact they once shared the same address.
You wonder at first what this has to do with the action in Fargo proper. By the time the closing credits roll, you realise it has everything to do with it.